JOE CONCHA: 'The Greatest Comeback Ever.' How Trump won the White House all over again
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
I watched Donald Trump swat at his ear as if being swung by a bee. And then he fell to the ground.
I was about to appear on "The Big Weekend Show" that hot Saturday afternoon on July 13, 2024, and was watching all of this unfold from the Studio M Green Room at Fox News headquarters in New York.
After what was about a minute, in what felt like hours, I watched as Trump rose to his feet. At that moment, almost anyone, including myself, would have kept their head down and let the Secret Service rush them to the closest vehicle to get the hell out of there.
Trump did the opposite.
"Fight! Fight! Fight!" he declared defiantly with blood on his face, the result of being struck in the ear by a bullet.
"I think he just won the election," I said to no one in particular in the Green Room.
Two days later, Trump would choose Ohio Senator JD Vance to be his running mate. Three days after that, he accepted his party's nomination for the third time. And three days after that, Joe Biden -- at the urging of his own party and George Clooney -- would bow out of the race.
Harris, the most unpopular vice president in polling history and a failed 2020 presidential candidate who didn't even get to 2020 before dropping out, became the nominee instead despite not receiving one vote from the public.
From there, Harris rode a wave of slobbering press through August. At one point, according to the Media Research Center, ABC News did 100 straight "news" stories on her campaign where every single one was positive.
The network also hosted the one and only debate between Trump and Harris, which ended up being a textbook example of overwhelming bias and dishonesty. ABC's news division is run by Dana Walden, who is not only best friends with Harris, she even set the former vice president up with her current husband, Doug Emhoff.
Overall, Trump got fact-checked five times by moderators during his single presidential debate with Harris and was on the receiving end of six follow-up questions. Harris was not fact-checked or followed up with once. The legacy media declared Harris the big winner, while I argued on the air that it was incumbent on her to make the sale on her policies, especially the economy. She failed miserably. Her poll numbers would only drift downward from there.
But it was the vice-presidential debate that ended up playing a huge role in the election. Harris could have chosen popular as her vice presidential running mate, Gov. Josh Shapiro from the crucial state of Pennsylvania. Instead, Harris went with goofy Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic leader who was best known for allowing Minneapolis to burn to the ground during the George Floyd riots and the guy also known for having tampon machines installed in boys' bathrooms.
JD Vance wiped the floor with Walz that night, who literally looked like a deer in the headlines throughout the debate. It was Trump and Vance who appeared to be normal, all while Harris and Walz looked and sounded, well... weird.
Trump also ran an unorthodox campaign by sitting down with podcasters like Joe Rogan for three hours while Harris was running to Oprah, who was last relevant when Bill Clinton was in office. Trump would also work a shift at McDonald's, which was ridiculed by legacy media but was a stroke of genius, because it's hard to imagine Hitler donning an apron and working a McDonald's drive-thru. And the photo you see on the cover of my new book this image went viral to non-propensity voters in a way any Harris event couldn't.
Trump would go on to win every swing state, with 89% of counties in the U.S. going more red than blue. He also won the popular vote. Republicans took back the Senate and held the House. The greatest comeback ever was complete.
In the end, Harris' campaign blew through $1.5 billion in cash in the span of under 100 days and had nothing to show for it. Democrats were (and still are) rudderless and devastated.
"Why will people buy your book if they know how it ends?" my 9-year-old asked me recently. It was a good question. And this is what I told her:
"We also know how "Titanic" ends, yet it made more than $1 billion at the box office in the 90s. Everybody went to go see it because, in my case, I wanted to know the story behind the hows and the whys."
The same thing applies here. In my new book, those "hows" and "whys" include:
How did Trump overcome 91 felony charges — rogue *judges* and the weaponization of the justice system by the likes of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James and Atlanta DA Fani Willis and Special Counsel Jack Smith?
How did the Secret Service and local law-enforcement allow a 20-year-old kid to completely outflank them and get on the one roof with the most perfect line of sight to Trump on that July day in Butler?
How did the Secret Service still allow Trump to go out on stage when they knew there was an active threat?
How was no one fired by the Biden administration after trump was almost killed?
How was a second would-be assassin —- Ryan Ruth be able to sit for more than 12 hours in a sniper's nest near the sixth hole at Trump International Golf Course in Florida?
Why didn't anyone in the Secret Service check the perimeter?
Why did Harris decide not to join Joe Rogan on his insanely popular podcast — While Trump did nearly 4 hours?
Why didn't Harris attend the Al Smith dinner… When the Catholic vote is so critical and the election was considered so tight?
Why did she choose Tim Walz as her running mate?
We explore all of these questions in "The Greatest Comeback Ever." And we have lots of fun in the process. I hope you enjoy the book!
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